DDAL08-05 Hero of the Troll Wars

Hurtling through time, you find yourself embroiled in a struggle to keep the fledgling town of Waterdeep from succumbing to a vicious Troll invasion. But sometimes the true threat lies within the city walls... A Two-Hour Adventure for Tier 1 Characters. Optimized for APL 3.

Again - feedback seems to be locked. This is certainly more coherent than the previous module in the series (DDAL08-04 A Wrinkle in the Weave). As other commenters have stated, the beginning is weak, but the following adventure wasn't too hard to run. A couple of quick notes:
1. I couldn't find any mention of tokens for each season in the module.
2. The abbey encounter was horribly vague in its setup. It would have been nice to see somewhere that the clergy would turn control over to Aghairon if they could get a sufficiently large amount of the special plant harvested (which would allow the sisters to heal the villagers who were unconcious). In the end, the party rolled a 20+ on a persuasion check against the dryad, and she instead quickened the growth of the plant with her own life force, allowing it to be harvested.
3. The location of the harbour area was very vaguely specified on the map. That whole sequence was a bit loose.
4. The damage over time poison in the wererat den needs to...See more be clarified. With no actual threat, my players took their time exploring. I had them make a check per room that they entered.
5. Some additional instructions on how to run the troll fight would have been good. E.g. Roll d6. On a 5 it attacks a villager instead of the party. On a 6 it attacks Aghairon. Aghairon and 25 villagers must survive for the objective to be met. Something like that would have made that combat a lot more interesting than beating on the troll until it's down and having someone drop some oil and a spark on it.

This might sound like a fairly picky post, but it was far less awful to run than DDAL08-04, and I was able to improvise my way around most of the encounters that lacked the required level of clarity. There's a difference between leaving scope for a DM to run the encounters their way, and simply leaving them to their own devices to make what they will of a module - especially for DDAL content, which needs to be respectful of time pressures for in-store games. Still... a better effort than the last one.

Ronald MFebruary 19, 2019 12:44 pm UTC

I agree!

Brittney HNovember 11, 2018 5:11 pm UTC

PURCHASER

This is definitely the weakest of the entire trilogy when it comes to the beginning and the end. There is no introduction like there is in the 1st and 3rd module. I would recommend that the javelin be added in at the beginning of the introduction with the Blackstaff and the mission as the focus item for this module.

I would also have them come back to the present in the wrap up, have the Blackstaff physically exhausted by the rigors of maintaining the ritual to project their minds back in time. This can be touched on in the introduction with the Blackstaff saying that she cannot go herself because she must be the one to maintain the ritual and will give the party as much time as she can in order to complete the mission.Mention of the previous module can be made in an offhand comment at the beginning, saying something to the affect that "we used a ring last time and while it resonated with the same frequency, it was not the point in time we were looking for".

Simple additions...See more like these in my mind would tighten this module and give a bit more context/clarity for DMs to work with.

Louise PNovember 10, 2018 12:35 am UTC

Hey all-- A few DMs have contacted me requesting additional lore and information about Waterdeep in the 940s to supplement this module. Waterdeep is a storied place, and as such there was a mountain of background texture and information that the module only grazes. I originally posted this on the D&D Adventurers League Facebook page, and a friend suggested I post it here as well. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS for DD08-05 and DD08-04.

This information is NOT NEEDED to run the module. I'm depositing it for those who are interested in such things. This info comes from my research into Waterdeep and is gleaned from Waterdeep: The City of Splendor, Dragon Magazine #128: Waterdeep, Dungeon Magazine #128 (contains information on the Gosts and Artor Morlin), Volo's Guide to Waterdeep, compiled timelines of the Forgotten Realms, and many other sources. If you see a conflict between what I have written here and official texts, please defer to the official texts.

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Waterdeep and Aghairon:

Deepwater Harbor and its surrounding cliffside has been embroiled in terrible conflict for millennia. It has turned over between multiple races (see a bit more of this below) and was sacked time and time again. There's a bit more of ancient history below, but the chunk that is relevant to the events of ALDD08 starts around 882:

In 882, a human warlord known as Nimoar came to power. He easy deal with the scattered remnants of the fallen human tribes populating the cliff, and integrated those who surrendered with the host of human, elven, and dwarven migrants he had forged into an army. These people became the folk of Nimoar's Hold. They had it rough. Between 882 and 940, the Hold was sacked by pirates, human barbarians, orcs (Orcfastings War) and trolls (First Troll War). Nimoar razed miles of forest to the north of WD to the ground in his war efforts (in DD08-05, this is what angered chauntea's people. More on them in a bit) in the First Troll War. Nimoar survived it all and died of old age after the Orcfastings War.

Nimoar's successor was his general, Gharl who, we see fall fighting trolls in the Second Troll War during the beginning of DD08-05. After his, (after the events of the module), no fewer than SIX warlords rise to power and die in the war. It was chaos. Finally, Samular Caradoon, a knight of Tyrrish origin who was also a hero in the Second Troll War, rose to power and appointed Aghairon as his adviser, in 952. Sam rule was long, and the town expanded up the cliff under his rule. This is the beginning of Waterdeep as we know it. Castle Waterdeep is constructed during this period, and Samular is succeeded by Laroun, a female warlord who ruled for quite awhile. During her reign in the year 1007, Aghairon built his infamous tower.

But peace was not to be. In 1026, the orcs tribe to the north, who had rebuilt since their defeat in the Orcfastings War, were angered when travelers stole treasure from an Orcish holy site known as Ukrypt. In retaliation, they sacked Waterdeep-- twice. The war was long and bloody. Laroun died defending the walls, and the title of Warlord passed to Raurlor, her general. Sounds familiar, right? Two years later, Raurlor went mad with power, declaring he would unite the north under his banner under the name Emperor of the North.

About this time (1032, about a hundred years after DD08-05 module), Ahghairon has had enough. He's been there all along, advising the Samular, Laroun, and Raurlor. Watching the people of Waterdeep die again and again in countless acts of violence He turns Raurlor's sword into a viper, which strikes him down. Right then and there he declares himself Lord of Waterdeep and chooses significant people from among the populace to be the first Masked Lords of Waterdeep to rule the city... with the iron fist of democracy. Apparently no one saw fit to question the century-old wizard who just murdered a Warlord in cold blood with a magic snake sword, so the now-bustling city welcomed his rule. And the rest is history.

Under Ahgairon and the Masked Lords, Waterdeep survives and thrives. It shoulders plagues, more orcs, over-ambitious wizards, and some guy named the Lord of Bones, who opened Skullport for business and was generally creepy. In 1256, Ahghairon finally dies of old age. Probably. His body was sealed in his tower, which remains magically sealed to this day.

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Chauntea's Abbey:

The abbey predates the events of the Second Troll War by about 400 years. Interestingly, though, it 'fell in fire and ruin during the Second Troll War' and was never rebuilt. DD08-05 expands on these events. A maze of catacombs lurked beneath the Abbey as well.

The abbey is still widely known in the modern era, however, because a wealthy merchant saw fit to build a mansion right on top of it-- an action he immediately regretted, because the ruins of the Abbey are haunted as hell. From Waterdeep: City of Splendor: "The most famous haunting is know as the Monks of the Three Candles. A ghostly procession of monks who [...] march up long-vanished stairs toward their old fields."

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Umberlee's Cache:

Since -1088, sailors docking in Deepwater Harbor dumped treasure overboard to appease Umberlee, the 'XXX Queen of the Sea.' Religious mermen flocked to Thalqualnaar, their settlement in the Harbor, to worship her and to safeguard her treasure. This had the double effect of also safeguarding the land-dwelling citizens of the cliff above, because Umberlee is distinctly unforgiving when people steal her stuff. So much so that in -334, Mermish Clerics opened a chasm in the floor of the sea, sinking her hoarde of treasure beneath the waves, forever safe from mortal greed.

Stealing from Umberlee isn't a great idea: First, touching the object bestows a curses upon the user. But it gets worse: her Cache is guarded by Sea Wraiths (loosely alluded to in DD08-05 as creepy shapes swirling in the water), who are the undead spirits of thieves, damned to guard the treasure they sought to steal. Beneath the waves, dire sharks and giant octopi dissuade invaders. Deeper still there are rumors of krakens and leviathons nesting in the treasure. At the deepest crevice of the Cache lies Umberlee's Maw: once a year, the Maw transformed into a portal to the Blood Sea, wherein lies Umberlee's divine domain. From this domain, her aquatic minions emerge, scooping up her treasure in their tentacles, and drag it back to the Blood Sea-- along with the bones of any fools who thought to take it.

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Artor Morlin, the Gosts, and the City of the Dead:

The City of the Dead has been a cemetery for millennia. It extends deep into the earth, housing the bones of Waterdeep's countless fallen. In the year 1064, the city ran out of space to bury their citizens. Instead, they build large tombs that hold portals to demi-planes filled with bodies of the dead. These tombs are warded, of course, but sometimes wandering undead still escape and roam the cemetery, which is why the gates are locked tight at sundown.

But what about Artor?

This gentleman is a big player in the city's history, but he had his own machinations to attend to before settling in Waterdeep. Directly after the events of DD08-04, he moved (and, presumably took Malcar with him), in 133. At what is now known as Daggerford, Artor founded the Barony of the Steeping Falls. By 403, however, travelers know to avoid the Barony at all costs-- rumors of horrible creatures and dark magics emanate from the castle.

Artor settled in Waterdeep during the Second Troll War (in 947, seven years after the events of DD08-05), constructing a structure he called The Dungeon of the Crypt. In modern day, the Crypt is accessed most commonly through the Deepwinter family crypt, those folk being a prominent family of Waterdeep. However, there's another way in: through a secret bunker built by the Gost family to hold their illegal gains and treasure. The means to access this bunker have been lost to the modern day Gosts, but their villa still stands directly on top of it.

Malcar never really escapes from Artor, though. We don't know exactly what happens to him and his family in the intervening years between the modern day and the events of the trilogy, but we do know that eventually Artor lairs beneath his family home...

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History tidbits that take place between DDAL04 and DDAL05:

In 168, Halaster Blackcloak settles in Waterdeep and builds a tower and surrounding hold that he named Blackcloak Hold with his seven apprentices. He claimed the abandoned tunnels of the Dwarvish Clan Melkairkyn, who had previously excavated Mount Waterdeep. Halaster secretly waged viscous war with the Drow infesting the tunnels. Halaster moved entirely into his underground lair in 309, which would become the fledgling Undermountain. The remaining folk of his hold on the surface of the cliff slowly declined and scattered, eventually being vanquished by 482 by a Tethyrian tribe known as the Bloodhands.

In 554, the Abbey of Chauntea was built during the Bloodhand reign.

In the aftermath of the Orcfastings War, directly before the events of DD08-05, Warlord Gharl claimed a magic weapon from the orc host. Now, in canon, this is actually the Etten Axe of Uruth, a double sided axe whose two heads are chaotic and lawful evil, respectively, and not the weapon presented to players in DD08-05. However... there's no reason that he couldn't have taken two magical weapons from the remnants of the Orcish host. They too had their conflicts with Trolls; the worst of which pushed the Troll hoard upon the people of Waterdeep.

Ismail ANovember 15, 2018 2:07 pm UTC

PURCHASER

Thank you for posting this, it will add a ton of depth when running the module.

Louise PNovember 16, 2018 3:39 am UTC

No problem! Thank you for your interest in the module! Please feel free to reply to this post with any lore-related questions you may have (though as I said, please defer to official published WotC materials to reconcile any inconsistencies). I'm sure any question one person has is a question that many people have also.

Roger MNovember 30, 2018 3:33 pm UTC

PURCHASER

I what book, or lore does becoming a vampire thrall make you quit aging? The noble farmer Malcar Gost is at least 840 years old.

Mike ODecember 14, 2018 5:31 am UTC

That viscous war with the drow sounds messy.

Aaron TNovember 09, 2018 6:15 pm UTC

PURCHASER

I was surprised that this entire series of adventures didn't have the Item Unlock cards that DDAL08-01 through DDAL08-03 did.

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